


Behind the Curtain

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-22
Updated: 2009-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-06 02:00:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesse has a plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind the Curtain

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 'Earthlings Welcome Here'.
> 
> Written for the 7th annual Picture Is Worth 1000 Words Challenge.

"The dogs are gonna go crazy when we bring that thing inside."

"I know."

"People are gonna panic. Somebody's gonna start shooting, and somebody else is gonna get hurt."

"Somebody always does. And it's never the metal." Jesse can hear it walking behind her, leaden footsteps accompanying the scuffles and scrapes of the humans' boots on the packed-earth tunnel to their bunker. She can _feel_ it back there: it makes her shoulderblades itch with a phantom bullseye. "Connor's insane," she mutters, too quiet for the soldiers from his camp to hear.

Beside her, Youssef cuts her a wary look and quickens his pace.

The dogs go crazy. People panic. Somebody starts shooting, and somebody gets hurt. It's the fourth time Jesse's been present at the arrival of one of Connor's pets; it feels just like the first.

After Connor's ambassadors lead the machine away to find it something to do, Youssef joins her topside for patrol. They circle the perimetre once in silence; then, all in a rush, he says, "He expects us--even with the reprogramming--he's not on the front lines, he doesn't--he--"

"You saying I'm right?"

He looks at her, wretched. "Connor understands the machines. That's done a lot for us."

"Sure. But there's a difference between understanding them and trusting them." She remembers her trip to America in that damp can of a submarine piloted by one of Connor's metal men: she'd clutched her gun the whole way, her gaze--and almost everybody else's--fixed on the door to the conn, even though it was welded shut. "There's nothing _to_ trust. All they are is their programming, and even that goes bad."

"But Connor's--" Youssef makes a helpless noise. "There's nothing we can _do_."

She pauses, gauging him. "I have friends in Connor's camp. Friends, Youssef. Understand?"

His grip tightens on his gun. After a moment, he nods.

"Connor's forgotten that he's fighting for people. That his people are real boys and girls, not tin men." She thinks about the chatter from Topanga Canyon; hopes again it's not just fantasy. Insanity. "What we can do, Youssef, is remind him."

* * *

The first night, Riley sleeps almost twenty hours straight, curled into a tight, defensive ball even though the bed is huge. Jesse watches from the sofa; she expects restlessness or nightmares or both, and lets herself feel encouraged when there's neither.

The second night, Riley's too wired to sleep, high on the novelties of clean air, real food and ample luxury. She sprawls on top of the comforter wearing nothing under the hotel robe, face pink with happiness and sunburn from staying out too long--barely half an hour--on the balcony. "So we're going shopping tomorrow?" she asks, watching Jesse count the money she'd spent the day retrieving from various stashes throughout the city.

"We are." She finishes her count, writes the total in her ledger and closes everything into the room's safe. "You need clothes, makeup, supplies. Need to get you looking pretty."

Riley laughs, light and bubbly. "I thought I was already pretty. Isn't that why we're here?"

"You're here to do a lot more than be pretty."

At that, Riley glances away, the mirth draining from her face. She pulls her knees up, makes a show of rearranging the robe to keep herself modest. "Is he--" she begins, then tries again. "What am I supposed to...do? For him?"

In the silence before she answers, Jesse watches Riley's cheeks tinge a deeper rose under the sunburn. "You're supposed to be a teenaged girl," she says finally, walking across the room to sit close beside her on the bed. "Pretty. Needy. Human." She waits until Riley looks up at her, wide-eyed and wondering. "Normal."

Riley blanches. Her hands twist around each other in her lap.

"Don't worry, love." Reaching up, Jesse slips her fingers around a tendril of hair hanging at the side of Riley's face, smoothes it behind her ear. Riley tilts her head involuntarily into the touch. "I'll show you how."

* * *

"D'you remember," she says, drowsy, "d'you remember...puppet shows?"

Derek looks at her like she asked if he remembers discovering Atlantis. "Puppet shows."

"Yeah." Late-afternoon sunlight, yellow and brilliant, streams through the window out of a pure blue sky. Jesse lets her eyes drift shut and stretches on the hotel's soft bed, warm and naked beneath its clean sheets. "When I was little, my mum took me to watch puppet shows in the park. We'd sit on the grass with all these other mums and kids in front of a tall stage with thick red curtains." She sees them in her memory, rich velvet folds the colour of fresh blood in the sunlight. She opens her eyes and stares at the white, white ceiling. "I can't remember anything about the shows or the puppets anymore. All I remember are the curtains."

Derek kisses her, and it's as comfortable as the bed. "They have puppet shows at the beach," he says afterward, settling back against his own overstuffed pillow. "Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoons."

For as long as she's known him, Derek's noticed everything, retained details that no one would believe could ever be important until, suddenly, they are. Now, somehow, he has yet to see any of the things she's hiding.

Sometimes she thinks she might just tell him everything. When Riley gets skittish and Jesse wishes for sensible backup; when walking down the street surrounded by oblivious people makes her seethe; when she gets stupidly, bafflingly homesick.

Sometimes she thinks: maybe if he weren't Connor's uncle--

Jesse touches her fingertips to his stubbled cheek and smirks. "Funny Derek's quite the romantic."

He shrugs, loose and casual in the way that always catches her off-guard: it's such an unfamiliar look on him. "You're the one who brought it up."

"I know." Another kiss, then she's rolling out of bed and heading for the shower. "But puppet shows aren't any fun once you know what's behind the curtain."

 

End.


End file.
